Authors and reviewers

One of my fellow writers, Jenny Twist, wrote an article on ‘Blak Rayne Blog’ about reviews. I tried to leave a comment on that site but after trying three times without any results, I gave up and, since I thought the article was interesting for writers, I decided to put it on my own blog and ask for anyone interested in the article to come and read my comment here.

This is what I wrote:

Hi Jenny. Every writer wants to write a masterpiece. Nobody writes with the intention of producing rubbish. Time is just too precious. We spend weeks, months, often years weaving our dreams and thoughts into our stories. Sometimes we are even a bit shy about sharing them. Tastes are different, and there will always be those who will say, “This was crap.” It can be devastating to a budding author. We have to live with those negative comments. If the majority of readers like our stories then that is good enough. I remember one of my books received 5 stars from one reader and 1 star from another. Go figure. Some reviewers are kind. They won’t publish a review if they didn’t like the story. Perhaps they should write the author a short note explaining why they didn’t like it. That would help and not hurt so much.